Muniratna must be disqualified: Congress plaint to poll panel

BENGALURU:  The Karnataka Congress on Tuesday lodged a complaint against Muniratna,  BJP 
candidate for Rajarajeshwari Nagar bypolls. In their complaint to the Election Commission of India, the Congress demanded Muniratna’s disqualification over alleged electoral malpractice. The party accused its former MLA and now BJP candidate of bribing voters with Rs 5,000 to favour him in the upcoming November 3 bypolls.

In its four-page complaint filed with Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar,  the Congress also alleged that Muniratna and his party workers had also been seizing voter ID cards of those unwilling to vote for him to sabotage free and fair elections.

“There is reason to believe that the BJP candidate has spent more than Rs 2.50 crore towards his election campaign and most of the money has been spent in paying the voters and purchasing their votes for the forthcoming election.

Some of these voters have even complained to the ECI in this regard,” the Congress said in its complaint. This is the second petition in less than one week that Congress has submitted to the ECI. The Congress urged the ECI to disqualify Muniratna over malpractices as well as unaccounted expenditure.

Interestingly, in its complaint, the Congress deemed Muniratna a repeat offender and referred to 2018 assembly polls when Muniratna was booked after ECI officials found fake voter ID cards in properties belonging to his aides. Muniratna, however, in 2018 was a Congress candidate from RR Nagar and the party had defended him in the alleged scam even as BJP had accused him of attempting to rig the electoral process. Two years down the line, Muniratna is now a BJP candidate in the same constituency.